Believe in Yourself (with Brandi Carlile and André De Shields)

believed in themselves from the get go. Later we'll hear from the incredibly talented actor, director, and choreographer Andre de Shields. But first I'm talking to multiple Grammy Award winning singer and songwriter Brandy Carlisle. I first discovered Brandy back in when she performed her song The Joke at the Grammy Awards. That year, she was nominated four six, yes six Grammys for her album By the Way I Forgive You. I immediately tracked down as much of her music as I could,

and I've been a fan ever since. Brandy grew up in rural Washington State with very young parents who struggled to make a living and provide a stable home, but she was also surrounded by a lot of love and a lot of music. She's drawn on those roots to build a beautiful family of her own with her wife

Catherine and their two daughters, Evangeline and Elijah. Brandy writes about all of this in her memoir titled Broken Horses, and that's where I wanted to start our conversation by asking her what it was like to pull up those memories, the good, the bad, the wonderful and right this incredibly open, revealing and compelling book. I had always kind of mind my past for experience and songwriting and things like that, but just in a little random bursts without the detail,

you know. But when I actually really sat down and kind of meditated on it, everything came back smells and floral prints on couches and you know, whatever vehicle we happened to have at that time, and just my childhood became really clear and really vivid, and it poured out of me. I didn't hesitate. I didn't worry about what I was saying about mom or Dad or you know, my brother and sister, or the way that we lived or what was going on and our lives at that time.

I didn't think about embarrassment because I think in the back of my mind, I knew I could always go and take anything out, I could edit anything, and then I just didn't from what I read um not only about your parents, but your grandparents aunts uncle's. Yeah, there was a lot of love, there was a lot of fun, and there was a lot of unpredictability, instability and chaos. That's true. How would you describe your mom and your dad?

You emphasize how young they were. Yeah, they were, and in some ways and that I mean, this is a compliment. Are very young, and there's an energy about them and that endless opportunities for adventure and fun and honestly mostly chaos. There was always this kind of undercurrent of like, well, we're different and we don't have to do things the way other people do them. And it was like a

little bit like that film, you know, Captain Fantastic. There was a lot of late night discussion and I was privy to a lot of things that I don't know

if I needed to be privy to. But I was also given great wisdom and insight at a really young age, and for some reason, I just feel like I knew what to do with it, and that kind of narrative of like we're different, it we live different was what made not being at the same schools or having a lot of different houses, or a little bit of upheaval not just okay, but what I thought would be a preferable way to grow up. And looking back on it, I don't know that. I don't feel that way now.

I feel a pull all the time to raise my kids eccentrically with a little bit of chaos, a little bit of spontaneity, a little bit and we don't know what's going to happen. And um my wife makes me resistant. But I don't want to leave your childhood yet because you also describe the very serious illness you had as what a four year old? Can you talk about that? Yeah, when I was four years old, I contracted meninji kockumaningitis

and presented as really, really sick. But my mother was really young, I want to say, like twenty at the time, and I knew right away that something was wrong. But she was the kind of mom where she thought something was wrong all the time. You know, she had the speed dial if they even had that, you know, in

night what would two four nurse? And she told my dad that something was really wrong, and you know, he didn't believe her, and my mom was on the phone with two four nurse and two foreign nurse asked my mom to have me touch my chin to my chest, which I guess is like the telltale sign that somebody could have meningitis, and it made me pass out and I just remember waking up in the backseat of the car on my way to the emergency room and wound up being in the hospital in a coma for um

quite some time before I came to and didn't get out of there until after my fifth birthday, and um, there's still a bit of trauma, I think for both my parents, but mostly I think my mother about thinking that I wasn't going to pull through that, and it gave me a sense of specialness. You know, I was the first grandchild on both sides of the family, and and everybody had this kind of Brandy's got a mission thing, and it gave me a quite inflated sense of selving.

What was your earliest memory of making or listening to music, because the other part of the book, which I love is that you had a somewhat musical family, and I see pictures in the book of you as a really little kid, all dressed up, You're on stage, you're singing. What are your earliest memories. There's music on both sides of my family, country music and blue grass mostly. My dad's father played dobro and followed blue grass bands around in his RV, and I didn't get to spend much

time with him musically. He was a quiet guy that you know. But on my mom's side of the family, her dad was a cigar salesman and a country music singer and yodeler, and he was a very outward personality, big influence that I think about in here in my head all the time to this day. But he died really young, of a l s which is the worst season the world. And uh, when he died, kind of the last thing he in, whether he knew it or not, was light a fire in my mother to continue on

the music. And she did. She took all that grief and that little bit of money and got a p a system and put together a band and started singing and thought to include me and my brother. And so I was like seven or eight years old the first time I got on stage and sang a Roseanne Cash song. Tennessee flat top box at this place called the Northwest grand Ole Opry And I just want to be a cowgirl. I love that. Well. I also really love your mother's gutsiness that she got that p a system and put

herself up there. That is really making yourself vulnerable. And I think it's another real tribute to her as a mom that she knew to include you. Yeah, and she was really good. She looked great, huge hair, you know, she fixed my hair and put our clothes together and everything, and she just yeah, she'd always tell me she'd be sit in the front or I just going move, Brandy, move your body, stop wrapping them cord around your hand. Oh god, we're taking a quick break. Stay with us.

The other thing about your upbringing is that you know you grew up in a religious family and a religious community. Um. And I really like the way that faith and spirituality run through your story like yours. Yeah, like mine exactly, and how it evolves. And it was so touching to me and heartbreaking to read your description about a pastor refusing to baptize you. I guess because he knew you were gay and insisted that you renounce, literally renounce your self.

In order to be baptized, and you rightly refused to do that. Can you tell that story? Yeah, he really knew I was gay. Like That's really one of the hardest nuances about that stories, that he really knew I was gay. Like I was totally unapologetic about it. I presented that way. I brought my little girlfriend to church for some reason. I don't know why. I didn't expect that. Um, it was in the sermons, it was in the subtext.

You know, I did have a sense of audacity that I can't I would love to reconnect with actually, um, but yeah he did. And there was like a well, the Baptists are very big by the way on public declarations converting to possible public humiliation. And I already liked

being on stage. So you know, I went up to the front of the church and on one Sunday and said I'd like to be baptized, was applauded and hugged and given a schedule of you know, going to lunch with the pastor and learning the things I need to learn in the scriptures and understanding what going to take place, inviting people, and then got to the church that day to be baptized. And our talent and our family and

our friends kind of filled the church. And the pastor at the last minute asked me, which was I thought was really strange, asked me if I, quote unquote practiced homosexuality, and I just remember this furrowed brow looking at him. I said, you know, I'm I'm gay. I'm coming to church with my girlfriend, you know, and that we go we go into pizza Hut yesterday, like you know, you know, and chose that moment to tell me that he wasn't going to baptize me. And I had to kind of

run out the church in front of everyone. And it's probably one of the biggest humiliations in my life. Without trying to wrap it up into a attractive box and say that everything's fine now, without that experience, I wouldn't have known how much support actually had, how upset the people that came to see that happen for me. We're help set, my dad was, and I always felt I was kind of gay ninety is accepted, you know, kind of like we accept this, but don't put it into

our face kind of thing. Until that day and everybody becoming so upset, I felt, you know, more seen in that way than I ever had before, also more rejected than I ever had before. But um, it pushed me into another life that I needed to be pushed into. But also from that time forward, you really threw yourself into your music. And thinking back to being put on the stage as this, you know, little girl, three decades of performing and of writing, how has your relationship to

music evolved over that period of time. Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that's the moment that music became mine and I just I had to really separate my soul from some things, you know, And so I started getting interested in getting on airplane. I started getting interested in going to a big city, meeting different kinds of people, and less and less interested in country music. I remember

that night of my botched baptism. I call it putting my little CD player Jeff Buckley's Grace on repeat on Hallelujah, just over and over and over and over again, and occurring to me like I want to leave, and I want to write. I want to write a song like this. I don't care if it's a twelve minute song, a longer song for a longer story. But I also love the way that you found some extraordinary music icons that became mentors. I mean the kind of relationship that you

describe with Alton John from a far, far distance. There you are in Washington State, Alton's you know, in England or Atlanta or wherever you might be, and you are discovering this extraordinary human being, to say nothing of his you know, almost cosmic talent. I fall in love with Elton John over a six fifth sixth grade book report about Ryan White, never hearing a note. I loved him because of his contribution to this boy's life. Who died I think it was it's in the nineties. He died

of AIDS. He had hemophilia. He contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion. I did a book report on him in school. I chose the book myself. You didn't even know what the book was about. I just saw a cute boy on the book and I picked it up in the school library and I did a book report. And in the end of the book, he befriends this British gay

rock star. He's being politicized, He's being asked to become the poster child for the church as a person affected by you know, sin in the world created by home sexual men. And this was a subtext that I had been taught in church, and was was thinking about this and talking about this a lot in my own home. And here's this new perspective in a book the God. And in the end he meets this rock star, and this rock star has got a couple of songs that are mentioned in the book, and he sings a song

at this kid's funeral called Skyline Pigeon. And I went to the King County Library and checked out the CD here and now Elton John c D a couple other Elton John c ds in a book by Philip Norman Elton John, Elton John, and I dove into this rock star. And before I ever heard him saying, I was already obsessed with him. And then I heard Skyline Pigeon. And then I heard Funeral for a friend and Benny and the Jets, and I just I went in to everything

Elton John. By the time I was like fourteen, there wasn't a square inch of my bedroom walls that weren't covered with Elton John memorabilia. I made homemade Elton John jewelry, and um I began playing piano. My parents got me an eighty dollar toys, rus Cassio keyboard and totally changed my life. And yeah, now he's like, he's my friend, he is your friend. But Ryan White died in nineteen nine, and he had such a an amazing effect on so

many people. You know, there eventually was a piece of legislation, the Ryan White Act, to provide more support resources for people living with HIV AIDS, and Alton just connected so immediately with this, you know, young boy from Indiana. But neither Ryan nor his mother ever allowed people if they could stop it using them in a negative way. I mean, they were bighearted, they were open minded. And I want to just make one other point. You got that book

about Ryan White in your school library. There are people right now who want to take a book like that out of public school libraries. You know, impressionable children shouldn't be learning about Ryan White. You know, it's just another perfect example among countless examples of why, you know, we have to stand up for the right of kids to you know, seek out and find information, and obviously your school library is one of the best ways to do that.

When and how did you finally meet Elton in person? First of all, that's a really really good point. And books like that that I had access to in my school sculpted a lot of things about my life. And that's just one of the many that gave me, you know, the worldview that propelled me forward in really really big ways. I love that you made that point. What was this was the second question? So when and where did you

meet Elton? Okay? So I met Elton, just like you'd hope I would, in a Las Vegas casino basement recording studio. He called me like ten years prior to that, or it gives me five years prior to that when I put out put out the story, but I hadn't met him yet, and I always wanted to meet him. I wrote him a letter when I made my album give Up the Ghost and asked him to play piano in one of my songs, and he just he called me

up and said, yeah, can you get to Vegas? So I did, and I just never forget it because I remember coming down this corridor and I could hear him talking and I had all of the every live VHS tape that he had ever recorded, every interview, and I'm like, oh my god, that's Elton. I'm gonna walk around the corner and I'm gonna see Elton John sitting there, And I did, and he was sitting there in a track suit, and he just gave me an enormous hug and then stayed with me all day for four hours, just talk

to me about music. Just gave me everything that I could have ever hoped to be given by meeting my very worthy hero. By the time I got home, he'd sent me a hundred CDs with sticky notes. Oh, talk about the day that you found out you were the most nominated woman of the nineteen Grammys. Described that because to me, it just blended so much about what your

life is like right now. I mean it was the middle of the night because we're on the West Coast, and I just the phone call that from relative obscurity in terms of the Grammys, I have been nominated for six of them, and I was just in total disbelief. I knew it was going to be a watershed moment. I knew it was going to change my life, and it really did. It was my my publicistant friend, Osha, She's just like they just kept saying your name. You know. I wasn't even awake. It was pitch dark, and I

woke up everybody in my house. And but you know, I mean, you know because you're a Grammy winner, right, Yeah, that's right for the spoken word, that's true. Where's your brily I'm looking for in the background. I don't see it. I have it in our our library. It's part of history. Okay, Well, before we go, I have to ask you. I know you love fishing, and you know you you write in the book nothing's really ever got ahold of me the way fishing and music cab. Okay, what is the biggest

fish you've ever caught? And was it the same feeling you had when you got all those Grammys? It was the same feeling, I mean nearly identical, because, as I said in the book, fishing is merely an attempt to connect to something that you know is there but but can't see a perpetual series of occasions for hope. The biggest fish I ever caught was in Alaska on the Kenai River. It's a forty three pound king salmon. That's one big fish. You know. I've actually fished for salmon

in Alaska and those fish are big. They are big, and they're delicious too. Did they pack your fish and prepare it so that you could go and eat it later. I prepared it. You prepare it, no, girl, But you know something about that. Huh. Oh my gosh. But I also love I mean your your definition of fishing is almost like a perfect definition of faith. I'm gonna I'm gonna remember that. I think that that's exactly what I parallel it with. Well, Brandy Carlisle, I cannot thank you enough.

This was such a true delight. Do you have any parting words or any yeah I singing words or anything you want to leave us with. I cannot tell you how much talking to you today has has meant to me. And I almost can't do anything else for the rest of the day now. I just I think that you are such a special person. You're such a gift to the world. You've been a gift in my life. You know the song we keep skimming over, the joke that I sang at the Grammys. I wrote that first line

in the second verse about you. Oh I'm getting over a colt, So I'm gonna do my best. You get discouraged, don't you. Girl. It's your brother's world for a little while, longer, a little while, just a little while, not too much Thank you, Thank You. Randy Carlyle's memoir is Broken Horses. One of my favorite shows on Broadway in recent years

is the Tony Award winning Best Musical Hades Town. In this modern retelling of Orpheus and Eriticy, the character of Herme's messenger to the gods carries us through the entire show, and who better to play a god than the larger than life personality Andrea de Shields. Following a shutdown during the pandemic, Hades Town is up and running again with Andrea at the Helm. But this is just the latest

chapter in his long and glorious history. At age seventy six, Andre has been performing in the theater for over fifty years, starting with his professional debut in the hit rock musical Hair back in nineteen sixty nine and I hate to tell you that I actually saw it way back then. But since then he's appeared on film and TV and in more musicals like The Whiz and Ain't Misbehavior. Three Tony Award nominations and one win later, He's truly a

living legend of the stage. Andre was born in the nineteen forties and grew up in Baltimore as the ninth of eleven siblings. His mother was a domestic worker, his father was a tailor. The stories he tells of how he got from there to hear always believing in himself along the way, or an inspiration to anyone with a dream of making it, of making something that you really can be proud of. I was so delighted to speak with him. Good morning, Oh, good morning. I love your

red background. Wow. We may not know this, it's my aura. I can understand that, my friend. You know, I was privileged, as you know, to see you in Hades Town for which you won a Tony in as you marked your fiftieth anniversary of working on the stage. And I want to go back to the beginning because I want our listeners to have a little idea of where you know

you come from, what your roots are. I think it's really a great American story, but it's more a tribute to your energy and your resilience and your determination in your aura. So what type of kid were you? Andre? Were you shy? Were you somebody who liked attention? I know you were one of eleven kids. My roots are in Baltimore, Maryland, and I would not describe myself as shy, m I would describe myself as secretly ambitious. I come from meager beginnings and that was my impetus to achieve.

There were very few of us who lived in the inner most of the inner cities in Baltimore who dared to dream. We were not encouraged to dream. We were not encouraged to be ambitious. We were not encouraged to think that we could have a slice of the vaunted American pie. But that was my first conscious thought. I want my slice of the American pie. Did anyone in your family know about your dream? Encourage your dreams? Everyone

knew about my dream. I shared it with everyone I wanted to be Sammy Davis Jr. Who arguably is the greatest entertainer of However, the response was, oh, you must be out of your mind. So when I didn't get the visceral support, I thought, well, let me put this in my vest, close to my heart. Let me keep it there so it wouldn't be sullied. So Andrew, tell us about your parents. They clearly had some kind of influence on you, as all parents do one way or

the other. And tell us about that. When I was old enough to have an adult conversation with my mother and father. My mother shared with me that her life's dream was to be a chorus girl, and I thought what she said, Yes, she didn't use the term dances. She said chorus girl, my parents having been born around the turn of the twentieth century. And I said, so, what happened? Her response was her father said to her, no decent colored daughter of mine is going to shuffle

her way through life. We've hardly shuffled our way off the plantation. Now that is very meaningful for me because my maternal grandfather was the son of his master. So I decided, with that information I should ask my father amazingly, but in retrospect, not amazingly at all. His response was, his life dream was he wanted to be a singer. He had a beautiful tone of voice, and he sang in church, and he had a club that he's sang with.

And I said, well, what happened to that dream? He said, his father, my paternal grandfather, said, how do you expect to be a responsible husband and father with such an irresponsible career. I tell that story because what happened is that both my parents deferred their dreams. I believe that I am the manifestation of those deferred dreams, because from the morning on a cold January day that I was evicted from my mother's womb, that was imprinted on my spirit.

You are the manifestation of the deferred reams of your parents. I've never had a question about my path in life. That's a great manifestation. I knew that in order to overcome these invisible but seemingly insurmountable walls that we build around ourselves when we are constantly told that we cannot achieve, and that there is a demarcation in the society that

says you stay where you are. There is no mobility right right, And you know, sadly it is as you just said, sometimes from the people that you're living with, people who love you, who are afraid for you, and they want to protect you. They want to protect you, and they unfortunately often evidence that in a way that you know, kind of tries to pull you down or push you back so that you don't get out into

that world where you will get hurt. And then, of course, on the receiving end, you've got people who are you know, not expecting much or who are outright, you know, prejudiced, and biased against you and your dream. I want to say something about protecting people. I know it is meant for good, but you cannot protect an individual from himself. You cannot protect an individual from his ambition. You cannot protect an individual from his destiny. You have to encourage

an individual, especially when when he's young. You must say go forth and being the most authentic individual that you can. I want to ask one one last question about this. So when was the first time you performed in public and you knew that the dream was not just a dream you kept close to your heart, it could be your reality. After the dream that I was protecting, I had the epiphany, and that was seeing the film Cabin

in the Sky. M John Bubbles so Black. When I saw his performance in Cabin in the Sky, the quiet voice that lives in the core of our souls and speaks to us only the truth, said to me, Andre, that's what you're going to do, because all of a sudden you had an epiphany, because you know, there's that old saying you can't be what you can't see exactly, and you saw it. I saw it so as a young precaution Negro boy in Bolt. You know about the

Society of Friends. They came to me through the Central Scholarship Bureau and said, you're a young man with potential. We would like to offer you a scholarship to go to college. The condition is that you must attend the college of our choice. I jumped at the opportunity, the first child in the family to go to college. Wilmington's

College in Williamington, Ohio, a pristine, intimate Quaker school. And when I was going to college, and I know you remember this, it was Derek to do your junior year abroad. I did my junior year in Denmark. And when I arrived in Denmark, I was received as the very opposite to the way I had been treated in Baltimore. In Baltimore, in many ways, I was discumming the earth, and I'm not exaggerating. In Denmark, I was royalty. Can I touch your skin? Can I touch your Can I touch your hair?

I'm not kidding. There was It blew my mind. It opened my eyes to not only the place in which I had arrived, but the place from where I had come. And at that time, all the major cities were experiencing their urban insurrections. And I thought to myself that's where I come from. So when I returned, I have to leave that pristine Quaker environment and go to where the veil was being ripped from the eyes of political America. So I ended up at the University of Wisconsin, one

of the hot ded's a political change. Really did you jump right right right the But what an incredible realization that you had about yourself and your life as a relatively young person. I mean, you're still what years old? When you decide exactly I've got to get out into this world that's waiting for me. I've got an idea now where I came from and where I want to go. You graduated from Wisconsin Universe consin Madison, in I think right, And the month I graduated, I won a position in

Tom O'hoggian's Hair's So Great. That was my first professional performance. Now that's the equation I want to share with anybody who's curious about ambition, accomplishment, destiny, any of those huge ideas. First you must have the dream. Second you must have the epiphany. The third part of the equation is once on that Thursday when someone comes to you and puts a check in your hand and pays you for the dream that has now become the work. That's the equation.

From there, your destiny will rise up, shake your hand and say welcome. I've been waiting for you all this time. But the epiphany and the opportunity also requires work. Once you are offered that position, you know in hair, you have to put in the work, didn't you? That is correct, But the work starts long before the paycheck arrives. You know.

It strikes me that it was in the Whiz that you had your incredible breakout national moment, and how appropriate it is that a musical retelling of the Wizard of Oz through Black culture and music would be the groundbreaking success it was, and also your opportunity to manifest that dream. How did you end up in the Whiz? So I've

gotten my first professional gig in Chicago. We're in the early seventies now and we are creating an off Loop theatrical experience, which is tantamount to what we call off Broadway. And a group of us from the University of Wisconsin founded the Organic Theater Company and created a show called Warp w A r P. It's the science fiction show. Produced a saw it and thought, wow, this would go

well in New York. He brought us to New York in nine We were sumarily dismissed by the New York critics, and the consensus was, listen to you dirty foot hippies, go back to Chicago now. When the company returned to Chicago, I said, guys, I love you all. You've been my family for four years. But now that I'm in New York,

I'm going to take my chances here. And by the grace of four women friends of mine who were in New York working, and these four women would allow me to couch surf, take care of my cat, and you can sleep in my couch, wash my dishes and you can sleep on my couch, and that sort of thing. As my mother would say. I didn't have a pot to piston or a window to throw it out of. But I was right. But I was in the camelot. All I had to do was to discover my coat

of arms, if you will. Ken Hopper, the producer of The Whiz, cast his net. We're looking for the actress who would say these roles. I got an audition. I was cut for the scarecrow. I was cut for the lion. I was cut for the tin man. It didn't matter to me because I wanted to be the Wizard, but I had to beg for it. And Ken Harper said to me, all right, I think he thought he was getting rid of me. Will allow you to audition for

the Whiz. Now. When I got the call back, I had pulled my hair out to it's Jimmy Hendricks length. I was wearing my five inch silver studied platforms. I was wearing my hot pants. I was wearing my halter that had love embroidered all over it. I was wearing my my Sight earrings. I was glorious. And I went in and I sang and I think this is part of your growing up to midnight hour. Oh perfect right,

I'm going away till the midnight hour. So I get to the end of the song and Charlie Smalls, who was the composer for The Whiz, stands up and shouts, that's my Whiz. Hallelujah, hallelujah. That's what I'm talking about. When you do the proper preparation, the destiny unfolds in one golden step after the next, not immediately. It takes time. But if you continue to apply yourself, if you continue

to cultivate patients. If you continue to know yourself and be yourself and understand that authenticity is everything, you will receive the blessing that has your name written on it. I love that you know. You know so much of what happens in live theater is ephemeral. But the Whiz was one of those moments where it was just like a great earthquake came down from on high and shook

the foundation of American musical theater. In fact, I think your costume is now in the Smithsonian, is correct, National Museum of African American History and Culture. Did you know when you were in the Whiz it was literally a

moment of destiny for the culture. Yes, we we all knew as a community that we were part of a tectonic change in a paradigm because prior to the Whiz, the only impact that black culture had on Broadway had come many years earlier with Lorraine Handsbury's Raising in the Sun. It was time that the traditionally inhospitable terrain of the Great White Way underwent the conditioning for what we now

call diversity, equity, and inclusion. We didn't use those terms in the early seventies, but we knew that we were setting the stage for a change. And here's the miracle of the Whiz. Stephany Mills play the role of Dorothy. Once you see Dorothy as a young girl of color, that is what universalizes the message of the Whiz, which is there's no place like home. That's a great lesson to learn. That's one of the greatest lessons to learn.

And once in someone's life, we go searching for our purpose everywhere, and then at some point we learned, oh, there's no place like home. As long as that was the exclusive domain of a young, although brilliant, white girl, it didn't resonate for the majority of young people. Once Dorothy has melanine in her skin, then that message of there's no place like home becomes universal, becomes a message for everybody, everybody. We'll be right back. Well. You know.

The other thing that, of course I love is in Hadestown, where you are again starring, which I also think of as a groundbreaking musical. You're playing a Greek god, Hermes, and you are omniscient. You are someone who is like leading the whole audience and all of us through the story. I loved your performance. Thank you, Thank you absolutely just was knocked out. When I think about it, though, you are now again because after the pande Emmick Hadestown reopened,

so you're back on the stage. You are, I think, still doing eight shows a week. Look, that's not an easy schedule at any age. And when you accepted your Tony Award, I'll never forget this in you shared with the audience your three Carnival rules for sustainability and longevity. And although you put it in the context of the arts, I would say, I think these are pretty good rules for anybody. Could you share them with our listeners on this podcast, I'd be happy to The context in which

I learned it was the arts. Anything you want to do, anything that you want to master, will be enhanced if the arts are part of your preparation. You don't have to become an actor. You don't have to dance, you don't have to sing. You just have to bebble the hard edges by saying or understanding that you are an artist. You are a good mother, you have cultivated the art of parenthood. You're a good construction worker, You've mastered the art of building things. You are a good street cleaner,

garbage collector, you've mastered the art of sanitation. Cultivate the artistry of whatever it is you do, and then you can apply these three cardinal rules. Cardinal rule number one, surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming. Cardinal rule number two. Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be. Cardonal rule number three. The top of one mountain is

the bottom of the next, so keep climbing. MMM. I really appreciate the way that you took those cardinal rules and expanded them to what we do in our everyday lives, making it clear everybody can be an artist in his or her own way. Do what you can do. It's a pot luck supper. Bring your best dish. You literally I could. I could talk to you all day, my friend. I just wish you all of the blessings of this

extraordinary life that you're leading. May it continue with joy and gratitude and you continue to find ways to share it with you. It really means the world to me personally. May I have the last word? Yes, you may. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Madam President, thank you for allowing me to have this conversation with you. I'm taking it to everyone whose eyes light up when they see me. Come. You and Me Both is brought to you by I Heart Radio.

We're produced by Julie Subran, Kathleen Russo and Rob Russo, with help from Homa Aberdeen, Oscar Flores, Lindsay Hoffman, Brianna Johnson, Nick Merrill, Lona Valmorrow and Benita Zuman. Our engineer is Zack McNeice and the original music is by Forrest Gray. If you like You and Me Both, tell someone else about it. And if you're not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? You can subscribe to You and Me Both on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening, and, as Andrea says, keep climbing. I'll see you next week.